GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- After seeing her religion attacked in the worst way, Jasleen Kaur found it healing just to have a place to talk about it.

She talked to a dozen other high school students last week about her Sikh faith, as they did about their Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths, in a youth leadership workshop hosted by the Kent Intermediate School District. For Jasleen, a Forest Hills Northern junior, the three-day seminar provided welcome support following the Aug. 5 murder of six Sikh worshippers by a white supremacist in Oak Creek, Wis.

“It just hurts when you hear people who don’t know anything about your religion going out there and killing you,” said Jasleen, 15, during a lunch break. “Being born into this beautiful religion, you don’t expect anything like that happening.”

She had sympathetic listeners in Sarah Mageed, a Muslim, and Madeline Reeves and Ceara (cq) Hillary, both Catholics. All take their faith seriously and don’t want to see anyone else’s attacked, figuratively or literally.

“We’re here to share what we believe,” said Ceara, 14, a sophomore at Catholic Central. “We’re not going to tell somebody they’re wrong.”

Far from it. In discussing their beliefs, how to handle stereotypes and the often tricky business of religious freedom, seminar students found more common values than dividing doctrines.

“No matter what language, it all says the same thing: love God, pray to God and help others,” said Sarah, 15, a sophomore at Forest Hills Northern.

Sometimes it takes a younger person to boil it down just that way. A lot of adults with more cluttered minds could learn a thing or two.

Not that youth ensures religious understanding by a long shot. But these teens offered this longtime religion writer a needed glimpse of hope that inter-religious understanding just might have a future.

They’re part of a larger group of 22 students from 10 Kent County high schools formed this spring as part of the Year of Interfaith Understanding 2012. Organized by Julie Mushing, diversity coordinator for the KISD, the group was supported by a $22,000 grant from the Laura Jane Musser Fund. The students hail from Northview to Jenison to Kelloggsville, and from Baha’i to Pentecostal to Hindu to atheist (note to Hindus, Jews and interested others: late-comers are welcome!).

Their first get-together wasn’t too shabby: a brief meeting with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair before his May 29 address to the Economic Club of Grand Rapids. Blair encouraged the group to partner with his Faith Foundation’s high school program.

They’ve also toured the Grand Rapids Public Museum’s religious artifacts collection. Visits to various houses of worship and to an Oct. 30 Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue are in the offing, along with monthly meetings through the school year.

Last week’s workshop was put on by the Interfaith Alliance, a national group whose name speaks for itself. Its Leadership Education Advancing Democracy and Diversity (LEADD) program brings together high schoolers to learn about the First Amendment, interfaith dialogue and defending religious rights against hostile wrongs.

“Our hope with these kids is when they see a Muslim kid being bullied, or a Sikh kid being pushed around, they’ll speak out,” said Jay Keller, Alliance director of outreach and operations.

He’s seen students grow in their own faith while reaching out to others, pushing back against the post-9/11 culture of suspicion. Two Christian teens from Texas rose at 5 a.m. to pray with their Muslim workshop mates. Two Unitarian students apologized to a Muslim mother for being afraid of her faith’s followers.

At the KISD gathering, the only apparent difference between the Muslim students and the others were that the Muslims weren’t eating lunch. Humzah Azeem and Ibraheem Saleh didn’t seem to mind sticking to the Ramadan fast, occupying the lunch break with a card game called Yugioh instead.

“It’s opened my eyes a lot,” said Humzah, 14, a freshman at Forest Hills Central, “to see how open-minded people are to our faith.”

Humzah and Ibraheem liked being in a place where they could comfortably talk about their faith and learn about others, such as the Catholicism of Jenison sophomore Elena Schmitt.

“Part of the journey of faith is being able to understand other people,” said Elena, 15, who wants to form an interfaith group at her school.

Sydney Doornbos, 17, a senior at Grand Rapids Christian, says she understands why some Muslim women wear head scarves: “I love the modesty, I love the sacredness of it. I think it’s so beautiful.”

A common concern of parents is that their children will be converted to another faith, says the Alliance’s Jay Keller. But he’s seen quite the opposite, such as two Jewish students who decided to wear their yarmulkes more often.

“I feel like it grounds me more in my own faith,” said Madeline Reeves, 15, a sophomore at Catholic Central. “Talking about my faith makes it real for me.”

Same for Jasleen Kaur. She feels just a bit safer in her Sikh faith now that she’s had the chance to explain it.

“It’s a good feeling you get when somebody knows your religion,” Jasleen said. “It gives us hope that now that people know, we won’t have any more of this.”